Only Snakes Survive
by TheHorologium
Summary: [Short One-Shot] This is not the tale of a hero or a villain. This is not a tale of light or dark. This is a tale of cunning and opportunism, of a figure who seeks only to survive and claim from the dead he so easily manipulated. This is the story of the Snake in the Grass.


**First fiction written for Destiny. The telling tale of a rather curious individual unlike any other in the Destiny Universe. Enjoy.**

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><p><em>Now listen closely, my sweet child. <em>

_For this story is not one of honour and glory._

_This is not a story of brave heroes, of slain monsters or of damsels in distress. No, my son; t__his is the story of the survivor._

_This is the tale of the Snake in the Grass._

_Terrible danger lurks on every world we know of. The wastelands of Earth, the desolate Moonscape, the dense jungles of Venus and the arid deserts of Mars - all are home to the vicious monsters from the deepest, darkest depths of the void._

_Beyond the safety of those ancient Titan walls, my boy, lies the wilderness. That which is the realm of the creatures of the night._

_Prowling in the darkness. On every planet they stalk and creep through murky shadows, hunting each other - and us._

_Wolves. Tigers. Crows. Dragons._

_All shall devour the fool who disturbs their domain. He who walks into the wilderness shall not see the light again._

_Yet the myths live on._

_Stories of a nomad, wandering silently through the wilderness unscathed with a trail of corpses left in his wake._

_The Snake enters the wicked night, and exits with breath in his lungs._

_Wolves and tigers and crows and dragons - all must die one day. All must succumb to the darkness they so willingly inhabited._

_But the Snake slithers on._

_Many who hear of his tale ask the same question, but few ever discover the answer that lies right before them._

_What does the Snake want?_

_Should I tell you?_

_It is simple._

_The Snake wants everything. And I shall tell you how that Snake came to be._

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><p><em>Legends say he was once a Guardian, forged in light like the rest. A Hunter, but mysterious even to his peers.<em>

_One day, he vanished without uttering a word._

_Few noticed his disappearance. Even fewer bothered to question his abandoning of the Vanguard order._

_The Hunter traveled to the red planet, trekking across a thousand iron dunes in search of something very precious belonging to the Vex. His journey soon brought him into a Vex lair, where he slowly destroyed every infernal machine present, one by one - like a venomous bite dragging its prey into the hands of Death itself._

_That fabled Vex relic was soon in the Hunter's pocket._

_But he did not care for its value or its function. Wealth meant nothing to him._

_The Hunter was no fool. Claws and teeth were not among his tools of war; for the Hunter knew he was not a wolf or a tiger. He possessed a weapon far more insidious._

_Cunning._

_He walked across the sands of Meridian Bay for a hundred more days, through the ruins of Freehold and the Dust Palace seeking what no human had ever sought._

_Counsel with the Cabal._

_The Hunter finally made his demands heard deep in the Exclusion Zone, where he showed the Vex relic to the Legionaries of the Sand Eaters before him - daring them to try take it from him._

_The immense monsters chose to lower their guns and bring the Hunter to their leader in the fabled Sanguine Castle - a Cabal castle towering over the surface and touching the clouds, turned deep red by the iron dust swept onto its great bannered walls._

_The Hunter was brought to the throne room in the highest tower, to their leader sat upon the massive throne. A Colossus._

_The Colossus was a beast so huge it loomed over even its fellow Cabal subordinates. It barked a deep, trembling bellow and pointed a fist at the Hunter. It wanted the relic. And it had no intention of bartering for this Vex treasure which could decisively alter the Cabal-Vex war in their favour._

_But the Hunter simply smiled, waiting for the sounds of Vex teleportation to arrive._

_The machines had tracked him across Mars for some time now, coming to reclaim their property. Only now, he had allowed them to find him - right at the heart of the Cabal's power._

_Upon the instant he heard the screeching robots materialise into the room, the Hunter merely vanished from sight into invisibility, slithering into the corner of the throne room and patiently watching the massacre unfold before him._

_It was seldom long before every Vex and every Cabal had slaughtered each other. The stench of death hung thick in the air, a silent and desolate throne room awaiting the Hunter._

_This was how the Snake was born._

_With each step of his boot came the crunch of broken bones and metallic limbs, blood and oil drowning the floor in sickly black. The Snake slithered through it all, every step taking him closer to his goal._

_Finally, the Snake sat calmly upon the throne of the Sanguine Castle, looking over the carnage he had created. And he saw that it was good._

_The castle was only his first claim of many which followed and many to come._

_For the Snake is neither light nor darkness, neither hero nor villain._

_The Snake will wait as the wolves and tigers fight, the crows and dragons tearing each other asunder. He will watch as the creatures of the darkness and even the heroes of the light wipe each other from existence._

_And the Snake will be the king of all that is left. King of the ashes and the ruins and the ghosts._

_More than anything, the Snake in the Grass will survive._

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><p><strong>Thank you for reading! Leave a review or favourite if you enjoyed this.<strong>


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